Protestors and poultry

Today, while walking to my PR Publicity class, I noticed PETA protestors outside the McDonald's restaurant on 31st and Forest. They were holding signs that said "McCruelty" and featured pictures of scalded and mutilated chicks and chickens from hatcheries and chicken production plants. One of the girls was sitting in a vat of Hawaiian Punch (yes, I asked) and covered in it, representing a dead, scalded, bleeding chicken.

Yesterday, I found a tweet on Twitter that gave the link to a video of a hatchery inhumanely treating chicks in Iowa. The video was not put out by PETA but by Mercy for Animals; PETA supports the video all the same. It was just a coincidence that that video was released yesterday, but PETA had already arranged to protest in Des Moines today anyway.

Being the persuasive PR students we are, my class convinced our professor that this would be a great opportunity to get in on a live PR event. We went down to the McDonald's and spoke with a lot of the people involved. The store manager would not comment on the situation, just saying that they came in shortly before protesting to say that they were doing so. He took a fellow classmate's information and McDonald's did call him back. Max Maher sent me the transcription of the McDonald's representative, which you can read at the bottom of this post.

At the counter, I heard a worker yell out an order ready for three McChickens. I pounced (not really) over to the young man who took the paper bag of sandwiches and asked him about his purchase. He said that he wasn't even hungry, that seeing the protests made him want to buy the McChickens, so he did. His two friends followed suit. Another gentleman, who had entered the side door and not seen the protestors, said that while he was eating a chicken sandwich, he would not have been swayed to change his decision to eat that sandwich.

Going outside, we spoke with the coordinator of the protest, a girl named Kristina. She discussed the more humane ways of killing the chickens, a process called "CAS," which the burger chain has adopted in Europe and most recently in Canada but not in the U.S. "CAS" is also known as "controlled-atmosphere killing" and is a painless gassing method to kill the birds. While she said it is cheaper for McDonald's in the long-run, one must also take into consideration the costs to the slaughterhouses and hatcheries and the possible rise in chicken prices. Being the country's largest seller of chicken products, McD's is likely to see that as a definite drawback. However, the American Humane Certified said that CAS is not conclusively a humane method of poultry slaughter. Poultry were excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act.

I like being humane to animals, but I'm sorry, no vegetarianism or veganism for me. I eat Boca burgers and tofu, but I like my sirloin steak, Thanksgiving turkey and the occasional 2 a.m. McChicken. And I will continue to do so.

This is the response Max received from McDonald's regarding PETA:

"We appreciate the chance to correct the inaccuracies of PETA's campaign, and to outline the facts about McDonald's animal welfare practices. McDonald's expects humane treatment of animals by our suppliers in every part of the world where we do business.

McDonald's requires our food suppliers to do the right thing - for animals, for humans, and for the environment. Our goal has always been to lead the industry by bringing about improvements in animal welfare including rigorous, ongoing audits of our suppliers' facilities. McDonald's works with leading independent animal welfare experts and makes decisions based upon science to promote continuous improvement in animal welfare as part of our broader sustainable supply chain initiatives.

McDonald's continues to support our chicken suppliers' use of both controlled atmosphere stunning (CAS) and electrical stunning. There is no conclusive scientific consensus that one practice is better than the other, however, we recognize that in either method, good management practices are critical.

It is also important to note that in the U.S., there are no large-scale chicken producers that currently use the CAS method, therefore demands to purchase chickens from this method to meet McDonald's supply needs are not viable."